Post date: Mar 8, 2017 6:16:49 PM (updated 9.2026)
See more recent case studies here: https://www.seolondonsurrey.co.uk/seo-digital-marketing-case-studies
I am not claiming to be 'whiter than white', but I helped achieve the SEO rankings below without buying links, blog spam etc.
Please note I've broken some URLs below.
2015
Mahahome .com is an online retailer of kitchen accessories & tableware, household goods and DIY with over 12K items for sale from hundreds of well known brands.
I was contacted in early 2015 to investigate a reported ranking and traffic drop after a recent redesign of their site. This was a one-off report with no ongoing work.
Since my review the number of phrases the site is ranking for in the top 20 non-paid results on google.co.uk has climbed in 10 months from 51 in December 2014 to 261 in October 2015 according to semrush.com.
Sep 2014 – Oct 2014
After mindfulpresenter .com was launched a SEO / PPC / Content campaign was commenced. In the second month of ongoing work (consisting of 1 day per month) consisting of content creation (by the client with strategy guided by myself) & Social Media / link building activity alone referred around 750 sessions (a.k.a. visits) from other sites to the site in the period Sep 6-Oct 6, 2014 alone including 310 visits to the site from https://news.ycombinator .com/.
The site had just been launched and was not ranking for any core key phrases organically so this was a tactic used alongside PPC.
Jul 2013 – Aug 2014
There were various (SEO) issues inc. a pre-existing (partial) low quality backlink profile and a ranking drop around the time of a new site launch in November 2013. Despite this, through inbound link building & strategic advice etc I have helped them improve their rankings on google .co.uk for multiple competitive key phrases e.g. at time of writing (6.2014) they are ranking 2nd on google.co.uk for key phrase "employee surveys".
2013 – 2013
My review & outline of SEO strategy for this site when it was acquired by the Travel Weekly Group has contributed to growth leading to record user figures for UK’s number one hospitality news website in 2015. See https://www.thecaterer.com/news/thecaterercom-breaks-user-figures-record
2010 – 2015
empirelaundry .com is at time of writing (6.2014) converting at a rate of 20%+ monthly in terms of enquiry form completions on the site (does not include phone calls or email via the site), of which around 10% of the total form completions are from Google Adwords.
wiltongreen .com is at time of writing (6.2014) ranking 1st on google.co.uk for core key phrase 'laundry service London' (they were 13th for this phrase in June 2010 when work commenced) and 6th for 'laundry London' (they were 22nd for this phrase in June 2010).
2016 – 2016
I was engaged by mooveagency .com to do a brief review of their site and advise on certain issues relating to their strategy. There wasn't any ongoing work.
When I did the report from a browser check (not depersonalised) in early June 2016 they were around 120th for the phrase "web design london" on google.co.uk – at the end of June 2016 they were 41st. This was the result of Moove implementing just one of my (on-page) recommendations - changing a meta title on the homepage!
The number of phrases they are ranking for in the top 100 on google.co.uk (according to semrush .com) has gone up from 171 in June 2016 to 220 in Dec 2016 (a rise of around 20%) .
My 4.5 days SEO & PPC work (note: website optimisation has not commenced yet at time of writing for various reasons) on this traditional timber window and door manufacturer & installer (which included disavowal to Google of low quality links previously built to this site which may still be affecting rankings at time of writing) and PPC set up & management) resulted in the following thus far:
From a check (using the https://adwords.google.com/apt/anon/AdPreview tool with my location set as the UK) Woodland of Kingston are at time of writing (11.11.16) ranking 4th 'organically' on google.co.uk for their core key phrase 'box sash windows' (for which exact phrase there's an average of 390 monthly searches in the UK on Google recorded in Google Keyword Planner data) .
Note that this does appear to be a spammy sector on Google: see http://www.seolondonsurrey.co.uk/blog/analysis-of-a-spammy-search-engine-result-page-on-google-uk-2016 (probably should not be a surprise!).
The ranking from a semrush .com report for this phrase from July 2016 was 24th (an improvement of 20 places in 4 months).
In August 2016 I assisted a Hampshire b2b marketing agency with optimisation of the main international corporate website for a leading global supplier of petro-chemicals, with annual sales of over £30 billion. I did an in-depth SEO, content performance & analytics review which highlighted issues with the site's server etc.
This 4 days work contributed to the following results:
- an increase in the number of phrases the site is ranking for in the top 100 results on google.com of around 40% (from semrush .com data).
We have also seen a similar rise on google .co.uk.
I helped this website achieve a top 10 ranking on Google UK for "luxury silk scarves" in 2019 / 2020 (the site was not in the top 100 for this phrase when worked commenced).
In early 2016 I was asked by Sussex Websites to assist with the re-launch of Skinners Sheds online: their old website (skinners-sheds .com) was going to be redirected to a redesigned site on a new domain (skinnerssheds .co.uk).
This was part of a total of 4 days work including:
1. SEO strategic review inc. review of new site
2. Building Google friendly links to the old & new sites, Youtube content etc
3. Optimisation / revision of all 20 location business listings on the Google Map as these are often integrated into search results e.g. adding county of locations where it was not present. Some locations were listed under the name of the village they were in rather than village / nearest town so this was corrected.
4. Review of Yell listings inc. submission of missing listing
5. Optimisation of Youtube content
The number of phrases the skinners-sheds .com site was ranking for in the top 100 results on google .co.uk in February 2016 according to Semrush was 1,413.
skinnerssheds .co.uk ranked for 2,390 phrases in the top 100 results on google .co.uk in June 2016 - an improvement of around 50% in just 4 months. Semrush ranking data includes Google local map listings.
In terms of search engine visibility an approximate value for the equivalent Adwords cost for visitors coming to skinnerssheds .co.uk organically in Sept 2016, based on the cost of the same number of visitors generated through Adwords according to Semrush is around $14,695 at time of writing (20.10.16).
I have worked for TAG Hotels on a freelance basis since 2010, assisting them with SEO, PPC etc.
In terms of search engine visibility an approximate value for the equivalent Adwords cost for visitors coming to aviatorbytag .com organically in June 2016, based on the cost of the same number of visitors generated through Adwords according to Semrush is $26K.
This will include branded traffic (online travel agents are bidding on permutations of the hotel name). Semrush estimates 53% traffic is non-branded.
In late 2015 I was engaged by Insider London's marketing agency to review & define the search engine optimisation strategy for the website of this alternative London tour guide. This was 1 day of work. Since then in just 15 months the number of phrases the site is ranking for in the top 100 results on google .co.uk has doubled according to semrush.com from 1,775 in Feb 2016 to 3,543 in July 2017.
Rayotec .com contacted me after their rankings dropped on Google in late 2012. I helped them identify that due to the Penguin update in April 2012, Google had given the site a formal 'Unnatural Link Penalty' (which 2 other "SEO consultants" were not able to identify before me) which is formally notified via Google Webmaster Tools. I reviewed their backlinks to compile a link disavowal and reconsideration request to Google as well as providing general strategic SEO advice and link building. Their penalty from Google has now been lifted and rankings for their core key phrase "electric underfloor heating" were recovering slowly - they ranked 11th on google .co.uk for this phrase at time as of 6.2014.
This work for this UK-based luxury brand had mixed results due to multiple complications with geotargeting including Google changing it's guidance during the project (Google no longer recommended using
rel=canonical with hreflang tags: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/new-markupfor-multilingual-content.html ). The work was focused on targeting the USA on google.com (not the less competitive google.co.uk) with a limited time of budget of 1 day per month. But I still helped them to achieve multiple top 10 'organic' rankings for key phrases e.g. "luxury kindle covers" on Google.com & "designer ipad 2 cases" on Google .co.uk (correct as of 15.1.13). I am not in possession of a baseline ranking for the former key phrase which suggests it was not in the top 20 results, the latter phrase's baseline ranking was 18th.
Mahahome .com is an online retailer of kitchen accessories & tableware, household goods and DIY with over 12K items for sale from hundreds of well known brands. I was contacted in early 2015 to investigate a reported ranking and traffic drop after a recent redesign of their site. This was a one-off report with no ongoing work. Since my review the number of phrases the site is ranking for in the top 20 non-paid results on google.co.uk has climbed in 10 months from 51 in December 2014 to 261 in October 2015 according to semrush .com data.
There were various (SEO) issues inc. a pre-existing (partial) low quality backlink profile and a ranking drop around the time of a new site launch in November 2013. Despite this, through inbound link building & strategic advice etc I have helped them improve their rankings on google .co.uk for multiple competitive key phrases e.g. at time of writing (6.2014) they are ranking 2nd on google .co.uk for key phrase "employee surveys".
In May 2009 Beadle and Crome Interiors were not in the top 100 results on Google.co.uk for the key phrases 'hulsta' and 'luxury furniture'. At time of writing they were in the top 10 on Google.co.uk for both of these phrases. The work involved inbound link building and site structure / content optimisation with a limited time budget of 1 day per month which includes Pay Per Click advertising management.
The site was at time of writing (27.9.10) in the top 10 'organic' results of Google.co.uk for the following luxury furniture brand names:
Hulsta
Ligne Roset
Ekornes
Skovby
Cattelan Italia
Galotti Radice
Varier
Apart from 'Galotti Radice', the site was not ranking in the top 50 for any of the above brands (apart from Galotti Radice) when work commenced in May 2009.
Empirelaundry .com was (as of 6.2014) converting at a rate of 20%+ monthly in terms of form completions on the site (did not include phone calls or email via the site), of which around 10% of the total form completions are from Google Ads. As of 6.2014 wiltongreen .com was ranking 1st on google.co.uk for core key phrase 'laundry service London' (they were 13th for this phrase in June 2010 when work commenced) and 6th for 'laundry London' (they were 22nd for this phrase in June 2010).
Working with Budcus I helped obtain a top 10 position for the key phrase 'new disclosure opportunity' on google .co.uk for Horwath Clark Whitehill (now crowehorwath .net - a top 20 UK accountancy firm) within 2 months of commencing work. The baseline position was 30th+. This was by inbound link building only - we were not able to optimise or create (new) site content for various reasons.
Inbound Link Building for Bite CP clients. After only 2 days work by me we were able to achieve the following search results: Creageiridh .co.uk is the Top 10 results on google .com / .co.uk for "Scottish Holiday Houses" (29.3.09). Casaphoenix .co.uk is the Top 20 results on google .co.uk for "Spanish Villa Rental" (29.3.09).
I assisted Wise Tiger with some Pay Per Click advertising consultancy for their client Think Apartments. The result of this work contributed to this London based short-let apartments company achieving £1M in online bookings in just 10 months: see archived case study https://web.archive.org/web/20110917040614/http://www.wisetiger.co.uk/case-studies/single-case-study/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=51&tx_ttnews%5Byear%5D=2010&tx_ttnews%5Bmonth%5D=05&tx_ttnews%5Bday%5D=21&cHash=431a3c7123adb8d878a919b9f521fbce .
In my last salaried role I helped obtain a top 10 position for multiple key phrases including 'sheet music' (out of around 40 million listings) on google .co.uk for the London music shop Chappell of Bond Street. This is without buying or swapping links. This was a competitive area as there are many out of copyright and pirate sheet music sites. This was by inbound link building focusing on links from Wikis on valuable University (.ac.uk / .edu) domains due to the Student Discount available on the site, site content / structure optimisation and content syndication. When we started this work the site was new and not listed in the top 100 results for this key phrase. This took a period of around 2 years from site launch with 7 hours work a month.
This position was maintained for around 2 years, but the position for this phrase at time of writing was in the top 20 on google .co.uk. This was an example of 'brute force' link building.
In my last salaried role I helped obtain a Top 10 position on google.co.uk (out of around 400,000,000 competing indexed web pages) for the key phrase "international health insurance" for Interglobal PMI. The work involved inbound link building and site content optimisation with a very limited time budget. The baseline search engine position for this phrase was in the top 20.
In my last salaried role I helped obtain a 1st position (out of around 3,000,000 competing indexed web pages) for the key phrase "wholesale gifts" for Elgate Products on google .co.uk. This was achieved with a relatively limited time budget by inbound link building, site content / structure optimisation and content syndication. I am not in possession of a baseline search engine position for this ranking.
When the site launched in late 2005 they were paying a significant 3 figure monthly sum to be a featured listing on giftwareindex.com but now Elgate was listed above them for these phrases on google .co.uk at time of writing.
In my last salaried role I worked on Heals pay per click advertising and site optimisation, in 2007 helping them achieve one of the highest proportions of traffic from the Mosaic Group “Symbols of Success” (the wealthiest demographic according to the Mosaic classifications) for 4 weeks ending 1/12/07 according to Hitwise – see ‘Hitwise Lifestyle Snapshot Report’ https://web.archive.org/web/20080214190159/www.hitwise.com/news/uk200712.html (archived webpage) .